Once during a case of mine there was some little informality--someone inadvertently opened the door of the consulting-room when the decision was being written, or some other little incident of the sort occurred, and the rascally pettifogger complained to the Supreme Court of Revision, which is a part of the Senate.

The case was all about a few roubles, but it was discussed in St.Petersburg, and afterwards tried over again by another court of justices.

Now I have paid my Lehrgeld, and go no more to law." "Then you must expose yourself to all kinds of extortion ?" "Not so much as you might imagine.

I have my own way of dispensing justice.

When I catch a peasant's horse or cow in our fields, I lock it up and make the owner pay a ransom." "Is it not rather dangerous," I inquired, "to take the law thus into your own hands?
I have heard that the Russian justices are extremely severe against any one who has recourse to what our German jurists call Selbsthulfe." "That they are! So long as you are in Russia, you had much better let yourself be quietly robbed than use any violence against the robber.